New England nurses and midwives to walk off the job for closed meeting over state budget

Health professionals will come together for a closed meeting after being left infuriated when the state budget failed to address extreme workload issues and shift ratios.

Local members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) are set to gather at the Tamworth Services Club at 2pm on Tuesday to watch the special general meeting, held at the Sydney Town Hall, to discuss the next steps in their campaign.

Nurses and midwives from Tamworth hospital will stop work for three-and-a-half hours from 1:30pm to make their demands heard.

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In Gunnedah, work will stop for one hour and 10 minutes from 1:50pm, Manilla will see nurses and midwives walk out of the Manilla District Hospital at 2:00pm for one-and-a-half hours and work will stop at Armidale Community Health and Hospital for two hours from 2pm.

NSWNMA acting general secretary Shaye Candish said nurses and midwives across the state were dissatisfied by the budget's failure to consider safe staffing ratios and were concerned about the lack of transparency around the announcement of workforce incentives, especially in regional areas.

"A key concern is how little this health funding is targeted," she said.

"Our members need these taxpayer dollars to be delivered directly into nursing and midwifery staffing, rather than the thousands of dollars our members report being spent right now on cupcakes.

"The insensitivity is offensive, given we still have nurses and midwives working understaffed every day."

Assistant acting general secretary Michael Whaites said the staffing crisis would continue until workload issues were addressed.

"Until our members experience improvements to their workloads or witness meaningful changes to address workload fatigue," he said

"Sadly, we'll continue to see nurses and midwives leaving NSW, or the profession all together. They are done."

Participating NSWNMA branches are working with local management to ensure patient care will be maintained in all public hospitals and health services when work stops on Tuesday.

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